I am trying to write a script that executes differently depending on the currently active program, and I am wondering if there is any way to find this programatically.

For example, I come from the Mac world, and in Apple's Applescript you can do the following:

set appPath to the path to the frontmost application
set appName to the name of file appPath

and that will give you the name of the currently running application.

Is there anything similar that I can do in ubuntu-land?

Thanks!